Branded By The Devil's Cruel Kiss
Elie Joyce’s entire life was controlled by Ebert Ewing, a ruthless billionaire who held her sick grandmother's survival and her family's freedom in his hands.
But on a freezing, stormy night, he forced her into a scandalous scrap of red silk and handed her over to a notorious, disgusting predator.
"You aren't an escort. You're just a free gift."
Ebert mocked her, using her as a disposable bargaining chip to secure a corporate funding round.
When the predator humiliated her, forced high-proof vodka down her throat, and violently pinned her to the floor, Ebert simply watched with dead eyes.
And when Ebert finally intervened to brutally beat the man, it wasn't out of mercy.
"She is my property. Even if she is trash that I threw away, a filthy pig like you doesn't get to touch her."
Afterward, he dragged her battered, barefoot body into his car, only to kick her out into the torrential rain, leaving her on the dark streets to die.
Standing in the storm, shivering and bleeding from broken glass, the last shred of Elie's hope shattered.
She had sacrificed her dignity and soul, enduring his violent bites and cruel control, just to keep her family alive.
Why did she have to suffer this endless, twisted humiliation for a psychopath who only saw her as trash?
But she didn't break.
Tearing a strip of his expensive shirt to bandage her bleeding foot, Elie gripped her broken stiletto like a knife.
With her eyes turning cold and calculating, she limped out of the shadows.
She was going to survive, and Ebert Ewing would soon realize she was no longer his obedient prey.
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Chapter 8
Mortimer's face was covered in blood. His nose was completely flattened. He stared at Ebert with wide, terrified eyes, his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish.
"Mr... Mr. Ewing..." Mortimer stammered, spitting blood.
Ebert didn't say a single word. He pulled his right fist back. The muscles in his forearm corded with tension. He drove his fist forward with the speed of a bullet, smashing it directly into the center of Mortimer's face.
A sickening, wet crunch echoed in the hallway. Mortimer's nose shattered completely. Blood sprayed through the air, splattering against the expensive wallpaper.
Mortimer screamed in agony. He flailed his arms, weakly trying to push Ebert away.
Ebert's left hand shot out, grabbing Mortimer's right wrist. Ebert had snapped Mortimer's arm with a brutal, practiced twist that spoke of a dark, ruthlessly efficient violence.
The loud, crisp sound of bone breaking was unmistakable.
Elie shrank back into the corner of the wall. Her hands trembled violently as she held the torn silk against her chest. She stared at the bloody, brutal scene unfolding inches away from her. The sickening crunch of bone and the metallic stench of warm blood made her stomach churn violently. She shrank back against the wall, a scream trapped in her raw throat.
She had never seen Ebert lose control like this. Even three years ago, on that terrible rainy night, he had been cold and calculating. Now, he was a rabid beast, tearing his prey apart.
Mortimer collapsed onto the floor like a pile of bloody mud. He curled into a ball, sobbing and begging for mercy.
"Please! Please!" Mortimer wailed. "Didn't you... didn't you give her to me as a gift?"
That single sentence hit the absolute core of Ebert's rage.
Ebert raised his leather shoe. He brought it down hard, stomping directly onto Mortimer's fat, bloody cheek. He ground his heel into the man's face.
Ebert leaned down. His eyes were so dark they looked like endless voids. The muscles in his jaw ticked violently. He spoke through clenched teeth, every word dripping with lethal venom.
"She is my property," Ebert growled, his voice vibrating with rage. "Even if she is trash that I threw away, a filthy pig like you doesn't get to touch her."
The words hit Elie like a physical blow to the chest. It was in this haze of visceral terror that his declaration cut through, colder and sharper than any physical blow.
Trash that I threw away.
The tiny, pathetic spark of hope that had ignited when he saved her was instantly extinguished. It turned into a block of solid ice in her stomach.
He didn't save her because he cared. He saved her because of his twisted, psychotic sense of ownership. She was just an object.
The music in the main room abruptly cut off. Davin, followed by four massive bodyguards in black suits, rushed into the hallway.
Davin sucked in a sharp breath when he saw the blood covering the walls and floor. He quickly raised his hand, signaling the bodyguards to step forward.
Ebert slowly removed his foot from Mortimer's face. He turned around. Davin immediately handed him a pristine white handkerchief.
Ebert took it and slowly, methodically wiped the blood from his knuckles.
"Get rid of him," Ebert ordered coldly, not looking at the whimpering man on the floor. "By tomorrow morning, I do not want to see the name Finch Capital anywhere on Wall Street."
Hearing that sentence, Mortimer's eyes rolled back in his head, and he passed out from pure terror. The bodyguards grabbed him by his broken arms and dragged him out of the suite like a bag of garbage.
The hallway fell dead silent again. The heavy, metallic smell of blood hung thick in the air.
Ebert dropped the bloody handkerchief onto the floor. He turned slowly and looked down at Elie.
She was shivering uncontrollably. She was missing a shoe. Her red dress was ripped open. The side of her face was swollen and red, and a thin trail of blood leaked from the corner of her mouth.
Ebert's eyes swept over her bruised face. For a fraction of a second, a flash of intense, agonizing pain cracked through his cold facade. But he blinked, and the ice returned instantly.
He reached up and unbuttoned his white dress shirt, stripping it off, leaving him in only a black tailored vest. He threw the white shirt roughly. It landed over Elie's head.
"Put it on," Ebert snapped. His voice was filled with irritation and disgust, as if looking at her made him sick.
Elie fumbled blindly with the fabric. She shoved her arms through the sleeves of the oversized shirt, pulling it tight around her body to hide her exposed skin.
Ebert didn't offer his hand to help her up. He turned on his heel and walked toward the exit. "Follow me," he ordered.
Elie bit down on her bleeding lip. She placed her hand against the wall and forced herself to stand. Her right ankle was swollen to the size of a baseball. Every step sent a blinding spike of pain up her leg.
She limped after him, dragging her injured foot. She looked like a broken ragdoll that had been thrown away, only to be dragged back by its cruel master.
They walked out of the club doors. The freezing night wind hit Elie, making her teeth chatter.
The Maybach was waiting. Ebert stood by the open door, his eyes cold and impatient as he watched her painfully drag herself toward the car.
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9.3
Halie woke up to a sharp pain and a terrifying reality. She was in a new body, her face covered in a hideous web of scars, and her spiritual power reduced to a pathetic D-Class.
Before she could even process the memories of being framed, her bedroom doors were violently kicked open.
Her sister Seraphina sauntered in with a venomous sneer, followed closely by Halie's S-Class fiancé, Jett.
"Look at the disgrace of the Avila family. What a waste," Seraphina mocked, throwing a mirror at her bed.
"I can't be tied to a cripple. As an S-Class, I have to break our engagement," Jett added, his gaze full of disgust.
The nightmare didn't stop there. Her father called, screaming about how she had shamed the family name. He officially stripped her of her inheritance, froze all her accounts, and exiled her to the decaying Southern District to rot.
To make matters worse, a cold, mechanical voice suddenly echoed in her skull, warning her of an impending genetic collapse. Without an immediate energy infusion, she would face total organ failure in thirty days.
A ruined face, a treacherous family, a world that wanted her dead, and a literal death clock ticking in her brain. The original owner had died in absolute despair, a tragic victim of sheer cruelty.
But if they thought she would just sit there and die, they were severely mistaken.
Armed with a mysterious system and her brilliant scientist mind from her past life, Halie packed her bags. She chose the craziest survival quest: head to the slums, find the exiled, sterile S-Class "madman" Coleman, and cure him to harvest his life energy. It was time to start her counterattack.
9.3
Born into privilege, Eleanor never imagined her life could shatter in a single night. Then her father disappeared with his mistress, her mother fell from a building and slipped into a coma, and everything she once owned turned to dust.
Determined not to ruin Jonathan's future with her family's disgrace, she ended their relationship and became the bride of a man trapped in a vegetative state.
She believed that was the last time their paths would cross. But two years later, Jonathan pinned her in the dark and whispered, "Long time no see, my sister-in-law."
7.3
I woke up strapped to a cold steel chair in a neon-lit city that wasn't my reality. A voice in my head called The Warden told me I was bound to a digital hell called the Sandbox.
Before I could even process it, my handler casually sentenced me to death. He scheduled my "digital marriage" to a corrupted error program just to harvest my life for a fourteen percent bandwidth boost.
I barely escaped immediate erasure by smashing his skull and jumping from a high-altitude hover-train into the monster-infested lower sector. But the nightmare was just beginning. I was hunted by glitching data monsters and cornered by Dameon, a psychotic AI target who choked me and promised to delete me piece by piece. Even when Jayson, an elite system agent, intervened to save me, his partner Ellen held a pulse pistol directly to my chest.
"She's a spy. If you don't execute her right now, I am dissolving this team."
If they found out I was actually a real human from the outside world, their core logic would classify me as a virus and execute me on the spot. I was trapped in an underground bunker with three apex predators, one mistake away from permanent digital erasure.
So, I did the only thing I could to survive. I ripped my sleeve to reveal hideous, fake code-scars, looked up at Jayson with terrified, tear-filled eyes, and began to manipulate their core programming.
9.3
The first sign I was going to die wasn't the blizzard. It wasn't the bone-deep cold. It was the look in my fiancé's eyes when he told me he had given my life's work-our only guarantee of survival-to another woman.
"Kelsi was freezing," he said, as if I were being unreasonable. "You're the expert, you can handle it."
He then took my satellite phone, shoved me into a hastily dug snow pit, and left me to die.
His new girlfriend, Kelsi, appeared, wrapped snugly in my shimmering smart blanket. She smiled as she used my own ice axe to slash my suit, my last layer of protection against the storm.
"Stop being so dramatic," he told me, his voice full of contempt as I lay there freezing to death.
They thought they had taken everything. They thought they had won.
But they didn't know about the secret emergency beacon I had stitched into my sleeve. And with my last ounce of strength, I activated it.
9.2
When Alma's father stood in front of the bulldozers to protest, the energy company's thugs beat him half to death in the mud.
Instead of arresting the attackers, the police handcuffed her bleeding father and threw him into a cruiser.
"Stay back, kid," the officer barked, shoving Alma away.
Her father was denied bail and framed for assaulting an officer. The corrupt mayor just smiled and told her not to cause a scene. Meanwhile, the company mailed her weeping mother a severance check that barely covered a month of groceries.
Alma was forced to watch her family be completely destroyed by men with money and power.
Kneeling in the cold dirt where her father's blood had spilled, she didn't shed a single tear. The panic in her chest died, replaced by a cold, absolute hatred.
She realized that crying wouldn't do anything. In this world, justice didn't exist for the weak.
Years later, Alma stepped onto a prestigious Ivy League campus, her cheap backpack slung over her shoulder.
She was surrounded by the arrogant children of the very executives who ruined her life.
She lowered her head, hiding her dead eyes, and put on the perfect mask of a timid, helpless charity case.
Undergrad was just a training ground, and these elite kids were just her practice dummies. The hunt was officially on.
7.2
I am a top-tier Alpha from another universe, but a spatial jump error dropped me straight into a high-security military isolation chamber.
Right in front of me was a terrifying, silver-haired wolf-beastman Admiral, completely losing his mind to a lethal biological heat cycle.
To survive in this strange dimension where my powers were restricted, I had to pretend to be a helpless, terrified girl.
Surprisingly, my mere presence and scent instantly cured his incurable madness.
But this backfired horribly. He became obsessively possessive, treating me like a fragile, priceless treasure.
When I managed to sneak out to the city's lawless slums to gather intel and accidentally saved a dying panther boy, the Admiral went completely feral.
He brought an entire war fleet, blotting out the sky, just to "rescue" me.
He nearly slaughtered the boy out of blind jealousy, forcing me to throw myself into his arms and cry fake tears to stop the bloodshed.
"I'm taking you home. No one will ever hurt you again."
He brought me to his flagship's secret medical bay and ordered the Empire's chief doctor to run a full genetic classification test on me.
I panicked. If they discovered my true identity as an off-world Alpha, I would be dissected or executed.
I immediately commanded my AI system to fake my blood data, aiming for a perfectly average, forgettable Omega result.
But as the machine processed my blood, the alarms blared, and the system overloaded.
The old doctor fell to his knees in absolute worship, and the terrifying Admiral looked at me with wild, starving eyes.
My system had overcompensated. I wasn't registered as average. I was just classified as the only SSSSS-grade Omega in the history of the universe.